


The First Keep

by ba_lailah



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Villain Wins, Cold, Comes Back Wrong, Darkest Night treat, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Is it necrophilia if the person is only somewhat dead, Large Cock, Major Character Undeath, Painful Sex, Undead Dove: Do Not Eat, Undead Tormund
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-02 07:51:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20674352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ba_lailah/pseuds/ba_lailah
Summary: She wonders whether he would stop if she asks. Whether he has that much humanity left to him.She does not ask, because this undead husk of a Wildling has already been gentler to her than her husband ever was.





	The First Keep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arbitrarily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/gifts).

_Stupid, stupid, stupid,_ Sansa chants to herself as she stabs a walking corpse with her dragonglass blade and dodges its sudden collapse, _stupid, stupid, stupid_ as she nearly stumbles over Tyrion's body on the blood-streaked floor, _stupid, stupid, stupid_ as Varys is dragged shrieking back into the crypt while Sansa slips away. 

She runs toward the place that has always meant safety: the Great Keep's strong walls. _Of course he could raise the dead in the crypt. How did we not see it? Stupid, stupid—_ The monologue keeps her from seeing the chaos around her, her home turned into a churning morass of fire and screaming and death. 

She can't see Jon or Bran or Arya. She can't even see the wall until she nearly runs into it. She recognizes the curve of the First Keep. In the darkness there is a deeper darkness—a doorway. She ducks inside. Once she came here with desperate hope and a candle, but neither kindles for her now.

The noise of the battle fades away and she can hear her gasping breath and pounding heart. There's no one else in the abandoned old keep, no reason for anyone to be here—

Even as she thinks it, she hears the scrape of boot on stone. She has just enough time to feel dread fill her lungs like water before powerful hands come out of the dark to seize her arms.

She shrieks. In the depths of the keep, the sound is lost, as she is lost.

In the dim light cast by the fires raging outside the door, she makes out a tall form with shaggy hair and a shaggier beard. A familiar form. "Tormund?" she says uncertainly. "Tormund, it's me."

Then she sees the broken arrow buried in his chest, and the firelight glints off ice-blue eyes.

With her arms pinned, she has no way to reach the dragonglass dagger in her belt. She lifts her chin and braces for death. How many times has she done that? Too many to count, but she does it again, for as long as one stone of one wall stands, she is the Stark in Winterfell.

Instead of dealing the killing blow she expects, the wight only stands there, gripping her, staring at her with unearthly eyes. They're caught like that for a long frozen moment.

Tormund—the wight who was once Tormund—opens his mouth and whispers, "_Saaaaaaansaaaaaaa._"

Sansa sucks in a horrified breath and presses back against the wall. How is this possible? The wights are mindless killers in the Night King's thrall. They destroy everything in their path. They ravage the living. They don't whisper your name with a sound like the wind blowing over a grave.

Tormund releases her bruised arms and slowly caresses her cheek. His fingers are so cold. The most primal part of Sansa recoils. This is not a living man. He's foolishly freed her hand; every part of her with any sense is screaming that she should stab him while she can.

But it's _Tormund_. And he said her name.

Tormund steps closer, then closer still, his body right up against hers, their noses almost touching. She can feel the chill of his body even through her heaviest cloak. She searches his eyes and sees, for a moment, the slightest spark of awareness battling against the ice. _Was anyone ever so full of life?_ she thinks, and she holds his frozen hand against her face as if to heal a bruise.

He presses his mouth to hers. His cracked lips freeze her lips and his dry tongue chills her tongue. Only the faintest breath moves from his lungs to hers. She opens to him more in shock than in desire, at first, but soon desire is there too. She can't deny that she's had some idle thoughts about him late at night, his brash humor and staunch honor so unlike the man whose widow she is, whose name she will not even think. She'd heard whispers that Tormund was the sort of man who would see to a woman's pleasure, and wondered what it would be like to be with such a man. She never imagined it would be like this, embracing his risen corpse in a dusty, unlit corridor in the dead of winter as battle and flame rage outside. She can't comprehend it even as it's happening.

She wonders whether he would stop if she asks. Whether he has that much humanity left to him.

She does not ask, because this undead husk of a Wildling has already been gentler to her than her husband ever was.

Instead, she winds her fingers into his ice-encrusted hair and pulls him closer. She gathers enough spit to wet both their mouths, and their tongues slide over each other, cold and hot. His beard rasps against her mouth and chin. The splintered shaft of the arrow prods her shoulder, and she shudders to realize that the pressure of his body against hers is driving the arrow deeper in, but Tormund seems not to notice.

He pulls himself away only long enough to tear open his trousers. Sansa knows all too well what that means, and she can't help flinching. But instead of forcing himself on her, he kisses her again, plundering her mouth as though he can draw the life from her and use it to fight the Night King's death-magic. As soon as she has the thought, she dismisses it as fairy-tale nonsense, but her world has turned into one of Old Nan's stories, so why not fool herself into thinking a mad mockery of the act that creates life can somehow save her friend?

Besides, if she lets go of that pretense, she'll have to admit that this is, in some twisted, terrible way, a thing she's doing because she wants it.

Breathing hard against his mouth, she hikes up her heavy skirts. Tormund's chilly, calloused fingers unerringly seek out the slit in her smallclothes and rip it wide open, baring her delicate places to the freezing air. She's shockingly wet and ready. When he frees his enormous cock and it juts out at her, she blanches, but it's too late for second thoughts. He lifts her, gripping her arse, his hands so cold they burn, and braces her against the wall. Her legs dangle in the air and she has an absurd moment of feeling glad for her wool stockings.

Tormund thrusts into her. The icy column splits her open, abrading her tender flesh, and she howls like a wolf. For a moment she really thinks he has torn her open or shoved a sword up between her thighs—no rape ever hurt so much. Terror and regret churn in her belly. But he keeps kissing her, and she doesn't die. The cold inside her burns but also, incongruously, numbs the pain. Other, better sensations build as she accustoms herself to his girth. Soon her cries are only of pleasure and his strokes are slicked with her juices. If there's blood in there too, she'll care later.

She's heard the sneers that she has only an icy cavern where a woman's warmth should be. Maybe it's true. Maybe that's why she can take this and want more. Only a woman of Winterfell could beg to be fucked with a frozen prick.

As Sansa gasps "Yes" and "Please, please" and "Oh gods," Tormund is silent. Her urging neither speeds nor slows him. He fucks her with the same unwavering focus she saw in the risen Starks who turned the crypt into an abbatoir. The comparison makes her shudder and she writhes on his cock. The night's griefs and terrors and her desperate lust and the terrible cold within her all conspire to overwhelm her. 

She screams his name when she comes, and she _pushes_, as though their places were reversed and she were pouring her seed into him. She is overflowing with life. She drenches him with it. She clenches and pushes as though she were giving birth, as though by sheer will and pleasure she can undo what the Night King has done.

It's almost enough. The eerie light in his eyes wavers, and hope burns in her breast. But she can see the moment when the battle is lost, and the last flicker of Tormund vanishes into the blue.

The wight stares down at where their bodies are joined, as though puzzled by this strange intimacy. His moment of confusion is all Sansa needs. Her body still throbbing, her breath still heaving, she slips a hand down to her belt. The wight's belly is right up against her own and the dragonglass dagger slides in easily.

He collapses like a puppet with cut strings. She falls awkwardly on top of him and struggles to her feet, her skirts falling to cover her sticky thighs and shredded smallclothes. She stares down at the ungainly sprawl of Tormund's body—cock hanging limp from torn trousers, blood trickling from the dagger wound—and shies away from the realization that she was joined with a corpse.

It doesn't seem right to leave him that way. Sansa tugs Tormund's coat closed over his exposed middle. She closes his eyes, too, choking back a sob. She knows she'll never forget the way he looked at her, the ice-blue warring with the warm, living blue of his eyes as he tried with all his might to live enough to die.

Her own eyes have long since adjusted to the absence of light inside the First Keep. Moving slowly around the cold, empty ache in her middle, she sidles further in until she can only barely see the doorway through which she entered. Then she sits down on the floor, the bloodied dagger still in her hand, and waits to see what else will come to find her in the dark.


End file.
